Wayne State University's Old Main has been a Detroit landmark since 1896. / Mary Jane (MJ) Murawka/Wayne State University

Written by

Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

There’s no silver lining to Wayne State University’s 8.9% tuition increase, which will hit typical students with bills that are $900-$1,000 higher in the fall.

There’s no shortage of blame, either. This is the culmination of poor decision-making everywhere, from the university boardroom to the Capitol. It’s too bad, really, that those folks won’t feel the consequences.

Wayne State’s increase comes after years of the university holding tuition hikes below the state average and well below what the state’s other two big research universities were imposing on students.

The idea was simple: Wayne State’s primary purpose is to be an “opportunity campus,” a place where nontraditional students could access higher education as easily as run-of-the-mill, four-year students. If you’re working two jobs and raising a family, college — still the most valuable ticket to the middle class — has to be flexible and affordable. For years, Wayne State’s low tuition increases were offset by the state allocation.

But then the recession hit, and that allocation failed to keep pace with rising costs. And then, to add financial insult to injury, Gov. Rick Snyder cut higher education funding by 15% in his first budget, in part to pay for a big business tax cut. Some funding has been added back, but even so, Wayne State’s allocation in the coming year is the equivalent to what the university got in 1991 — essentially reflecting two “lost” decades in state commitment. Budgets are moral documents; draw your own conclusions about what Snyder’s decisions say about his higher-ed scruples.

Wayne State itself bears responsibility, too. The university has been growing its research capabilities, and beefing up its faculty at the same time state support was eroding. According to outgoing WSU President Allan Gilmour, the university has the third highest salaries among the 15 public universities, but ranks 12th or 13th in tuition costs.

That’s a model for financial failure, in and of itself. It should never have been maintained for this long. Combined with the state’s waning commitment to higher education, it has been devastating.

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Wayne State has a serious set of choices to make. It seems unlikely, even with this year’s huge tuition hike, that it will be able to sustain the dual purposes of research university and opportunity campus. They’re financially at odds in too may ways.

The university’s approach, so far, has largely been to cut — net costs are down 5.6% since 2007. In the last three years, Wayne State has cut its budget by $50 million, including $19 million this year. It has taken out about $5 million in costs annually, mostly through facilities and purchasing. But Wayne State will need a pretty big re-think to survive long term. Some costly graduate programs may need to be sacrificed for the sake of maintaining access to the school’s many nontraditional undergrads. Research may need to be honed along a few, narrower lines (medicine and related sciences, for instance) to streamline costs.

The university also must refocus attention on the quality of its undergraduate education. Wayne State’s six-year graduation rate stands at 28% and its 10-year graduation rate is 43%. Its graduation rates for African-American students is 9%, the lowest among public universities in the state. These are all statistics Wayne State must work to improve.

Everyone, from the business community to the state’s citizens, is waiting for Snyder and the Legislature to get back to the business of seriously funding higher education the way that other successful states do. Michigan spends more on prisons and safety net programs than it does on colleges and universities — one of only a few states where that’s so.

The consequences of that shortsightedness will visit upon Wayne students beginning this fall; the rest of the state won’t be far behind if Lansing doesn’t course-correct.